offensive approach against the president as well as jim lehrer, big barned the entirepbscrew. the debate focus around the economy as we knew it would and the candidates traded jabs over tax policies for the middle class. >> romney: under the president's policies middle income americans have been buried. they've been crushed. i will not under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle income families. >> obama: now, five weeks before the election, he's saying his big, bold idea is never mind. >> romney is saying he would push for tax relief is another flip-flop. from his statement a few weeks ago that we should not expect a huge cut in taxes if he's elected president. we'll do some fact checking for you in the next current news update. despite the lies and contradictions from romney, a new cnn poll says 67% of voters do think he won the debate. more bill press coming up after the break. stay with us. you're about to watch an ad message created by a current tv viewer for capella university. matter. education is the key

line for democrats. caller: good morning, i am a big fan of amy goodman. i saw a documentaryonpbsforwhat was called free elections that i have not had a chance to really look at it. it is about getting the votes to the people where they have to be obliged to the people. that is one thing. i would like to see cspan to start on that. every time i see wal-mart commercials and they talk about feeding the hungry and talk about how much money they have raised, it makes me so angry when they won't even pay their people a living wage. if we had a living wage, we would not have to have people on food stamps and we would not have to have people struggling. host: before i get a response, what would be your definition of a living wage? guest it is different for every area. caller: in our area, look much housing is. you cannot make enough money to even rent a home. one more thing -- i love president obama but my anger is when they went into the negotiations for health care, they took the public auction off the table. to me, that is the foundation of it. like she said about medicare for all,

despite mitt romney doing this. >> i'm sorry, jim, i'm going to stop the subsidytopbs, i'mgoing to stop other things. i like pbs. i like big bird. i actually like you, too. i'm not going to spend money on things to borrow money from china to pay for it. >> he [ bleep ] fired big bird! he still won walking away. romney won with the sound up. >> you're entitled to your own airplane and your own house but not to your own facts. >> romney won with the sound off. dude, he's yelling at you! look up! look up! what are you looking at? what are you writing that's so important? what are you doing -- oh, that's not -- oh, i didn't realize. that is impressive work. i didn't realize that. maybe you could give that to mitt romney as a souvenir of the night he crushed you in that debate. >> my gosh. okay. >> so that's what he's doing. because i'm sitting there going, what's he doing? >> good morning, everyone. >> it makes more sense. it fills in the blank. >> that gives us proper context. >> it is friday. it is friday, thank god. i need two days away from all of you people. october 5th. >> mika, hold

's basically a part-timeratpbs. itwas a curious choice of all the journalists that jim lehrer is who they called on for this. the one criticism that i see that resonates the most with me. we have three presidential debates and this was the domestic policy debaltdebate. this was a narrow set of policy questions last night. there were no questions about immigration last night or gay marriage last night. >> women's issues. >> these are major issues in the campaign and there's a movement to diversify the moderator pool a little bit. >> jim lehrer is a historic choice for them, but they treated him as a replacement ref. he should be out of the pool. >> i didn't think he was great. you can't blame the moderator. they had the same. >> he was terrible at his job. >> ultimately this wasn't about jim lehrer but president obama and mitt romney. they both had the opportunity to take advantage of the situation, and one did and one didn't. >> all right. so what do we make of all the 2012 election predictions out there? the original nate, nate silver is in the guest spot next, or is it becoming the

to borrow money from china to pay for things. i willcutpbs. iwill take programs that are currently good programs but i think would be more efficiently run at the state level. number three, i will make government more efficient and cut back the number of employees. i would cut back agencies and departments. my cutbacks will be done through attrition, by the way. this is the approach we have to take. the president said he would cut the deficit in half. unfortunately he doubled it. trillion dollar deficits for the last four years. the president has put us in almost as much debt held by the public as all former presidents combined. >> when i walked into the oval office, i had more than a trillion dollar debt. we know where it came from. two wars paid for on the credit card, two tax cuts not paid for, and a whole bunch of programs that were not paid for, and then a massive economic crisis. despite that, what we have said is, yes, we had to take initial emergency measures to make sure we didn't slip into a great depression. what we have also said is let's make sure we are cutting out those th

. [laughter] she appears on the takeaway and contributed to npr, bbc, wgvh, new york 1andpbs. nextto her is greg marx who's a staff writer for the columbia journalism review, co-editor of cjr's swing state project. he was a writer for remapping debate.org, and if you've seen his writings, which i have fold over the last few week -- followed over the last few weeks, he's doing some the most interesting commentary on how the campaign is being conducted. and then finally, my old colleague at newsday, ellis henican all the way on the left there -- appropriately. [laughter] a political analyst for the fox news channel. he's the author of "the new york times"' bestseller home team with new orleans saints coach sean payton. there's got to be a sequel to that with what's happened. [laughter] and in the blink of an eye with nascar's michaelal waltrip. he also is the voice of stormy on the cartoon network series 2021. [laughter] i thought where we'd start today is give the floor to michael howe and his presentation which probably gives us some material to react on. so, michael, it's all yours. >>

. >> stephanie: the muppets thing is really funny.cutpbsyouhave got a bunch of [ censor bleep ]ed muppets. good morning congresswoman. what was your impression of last night? >> i thought governor romney came across as very aggressive but he was really saying the same thing that he has been saying all along. i'm not going to put everything on the table and have a comprehensive solution to our economic problems because heaven forbid we would raise taxes on people making over $250,000. >> stephanie: right. >> he said he would repeal obamacare, and this is what i have been hearing in congress too, repeal and replace, but they forget the details of the replace. >> stephanie: exactly. >> we're not going to cut defense spending but don't you worry, we're going to balance the budget. i think the president was trying to explain why we have worked hard to stabilize the economy and now what he is going to try to do for the middle class in the next four years. so pundits are saying maybe he should have challenged governor romney more or whatever i -- i think that -- that he wa